Passenger Trains > "Amtrak Bob" Scolaro dies

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18475-2002Oct12.html

A Local Life: Robert Edward Scolaro
Heyday of Rail Travel Was His Ideal

By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 13, 2002; Page C11

Bob Scolaro would be the first to admit he had a one-track mind.

He loved model trains, creating imaginary worlds one car and crossing at a time. His career was with Amtrak, the last nine years as the sole ticket agent at the U.S. Capitol -- one of the railway\'s most vital and visible jobs because of the politicians it serves. On the Hill, he was
called "Amtrak Bob."

On summer weekends, he searched theme parks for the perfect roller coaster. One of his favorites, thrusting him 205 feet skyward, was at Cedar Point amusement park in Ohio.

But the positively mundane also held his interest, as long as it was rail-related. Take, for example, the stained and torn rag found in Scolaro\'s apartment after his death Sept. 27 at age 55 following a battle with AIDS and pneumonia.

"I said, \'Why is he saving this rag?\' -- until I saw the insignia," said James Robbins, his half brother.

It was from Scolaro\'s beloved New York Central, which had not run a train since the late 1960s. It also looked like many a postwar businessman had wiped his brow with it before putting on his fedora.

Robbins was cleaning up Scolaro\'s Capitol Hill basement apartment, a tight space filled with all manner of memorabilia -- dishes and napkins from trains, signs from long-defunct lines, timetables from 1932. Brass trains encased in glass cabinets competed for space with art deco railroad posters highlighting an era of streamlined beauty and romantic adventure.

That sense of long-ago loveliness was what made trains an enduring symbol to Scolaro, said his friend Ron Levine, an Amtrak manager.

"Bob was a fanatic on the old quality type of life from the 1950s," Levine said, "when trains had dining cars with quality food and the flowers on the table were real. . . . He saw how quality is missing in so many things. Everyone is in a rush; no one sits to have a cup of coffee or nice tea or eat off nice china."

Scolaro was an intensely private man, and few knew about his life or his illness.

He barely knew his father and grew up in Upstate New York with his maternal grandmother, who sometimes took him on train trips. He served in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War and joined the fledgling Amtrak in 1973.

He never wanted to be a train conductor or work in management. His ambition was ticket agentry, a job where his relations with people were businesslike but often intimate.

Michael Oscar, legislative assistant for Rep. Robert A. Borski (D-Pa.), said he relied on Scolaro when his mother suffered a stroke and he needed help in arranging a last-minute ticket.

"He said to me, \'I just wish if I were in your shoes that someone would be there to do something nice for me,\' " Oscar said.

Scolaro worked in a compact one-man office at the center of the Capitol just off the Crypt. It\'s a coveted position, not well-known to the general public and rarely crowded.

"He\'d call me and tell me there was a line out the door," said his boss, Joe McHugh, Amtrak\'s vice president for government affairs. "That would mean two people."

It is significant that Scolaro reported to McHugh, who does lobbying work. "It\'s a very high-profile position," McHugh said of the Capitol ticket office, adding that Scolaro "enjoyed having his own realm."

Scolaro was effective because he relished the intricacy of schedules and how many engines, dining cars and coaches might be on the 4 p.m., 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. trains along the Northeast Corridor.

Politicians\' schedules change by the minute, and the ticketing job requires great flexibility and efficiency. And, significantly, the desire to work alone.

Scolaro, who was sometimes cantankerous and enjoyed the off-color humor that was a holdover from his Marine Corps days, thrived in that atmosphere.

As dreamy as he could be about the amenities of train travel in the 1950s, he also had a deeply satirical take on modern-day bureaucratic procedure. He often sent missives -- entirely uppercase, typed notes about the bureaucratic "Amclowns" -- right to McHugh.

"They looked like ransom notes," McHugh joked.

But he knew Scolaro\'s best attributes would come across to customers, and he was right. Rep. Gary L. Ackerman (D-N.Y.) said his staff members sent a teddy bear and balloons when they heard of Scolaro\'s hospitalization.

McHugh said he worked with the union to get Scolaro\'s job exempted, meaning others with greater seniority could not take it away.

"I said, \'Bob, you\'ll have it till the day you die or retire,\' " McHugh said. "It\'s what sealed our friendship."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company